Parents volunteer to spruce up Buckingham Charter campus

VACAVILLE — Getting parents involved in the school and in the process making the school look a bit nicer were the goals Saturday as a number of volunteers showed up for a Campus Beautification day at Buckingham Charter High School.

The school campus, located in three buildings in a commercial development off Davis Street and Bella Vista Road, benefited from several projects as parents, who are required to perform service hours at the school, spent the first half of the day working.

Principal Jeff Erickson was pleased with the turnout and with the work.

“We have a lot of people,” he said. “I was expecting around 20 and I think we got about twice that number.”

Parents took on projects including painting walls in the gym, where the students eat lunch, painting the library, adding storage to some rooms and even running wire for new speaker systems.

“We weren’t expecting to paint the library, but when we went in here, it was a daunting task,” said Joan Miller, whose son is a senior. “We gave the library a fresh coat of paint. (It) took a lot of labor. We moved all the bookcases, painted one wall at a time and had to move the bookcases out and move the books.”

Miller praised the school’s service rule, which requires parents to perform 10 hours of volunteer work per year at the school or school events.

“I think it’s a fantastic idea,” Miller said. “I think it’s really good to have parent service hours because otherwise parents may or may not volunteer. What makes a school a great school is when you have parent involvement.”

Also working in the library were Cari Tennyson and her husband Guy, who have a junior son at Buckingham.

“It’s been fun. It’s nice to see we got to start and finish a whole project during the time we were here,” Cari Tennyson said.

Serving the school wasn’t the only positive Saturday.

“(It’s) nice to see other parents,” Tennyson said. “In high school, you don’t see (other) parents. You drop off, you leave, you pick up, you go home, so it’s a nice opportunity to get to know parents.”

She was also pleased that campus beautification was scheduled for a Saturday.

“It’s nice that the men can get involved, because they’re usually working,” she said as her husband taped off the door frame for the last little bit of paint. “The husbands can get involved.”

For Erickson, it just shows the quality of the school’s community.

“That’s one reason we’re such a great school here is that we’ve got really involved parents that want to help out,” he said.

Reach Mike Corpos at 427-6979 or [email protected] Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/mcorposdr.